Millions spent on new gTLDs as 11 auctions settled

New gTLD portfolio applicants settled at least 11 new gTLD contention sets last week, sharing the spoils of a private auction that looks to have totaled seven figures in sales.
Applicant Auction carried out auctions for 13 contested strings last week, which I believe lasted at least three days.
I’ve been able to determine that Donuts won six sets, Uniregistry won three and Minds + Machines won two. Radix seems to have lost at least five auctions, walking away with a great big pile of cash instead.

.hosting — Uniregistry won after Radix (which owns .host) withdrew.
.click — Uniregistry beat Radix.
.property — Uniregistry won after withdrawals from M+M and Donuts.
.yoga — M+M won, beating Donuts and Uniregistry.
.garden — M+M beat Donuts and Uniregistry again.
.娱乐 — Donuts won this string (Chinese for “.entertainment”) after Morden Media withdrew.
.deals — Donuts beat M+M and Radix.
.city — Donuts beat TLD Registry and Radix.
.forsale — Donuts beat DERForsale.
.world — Donuts beat Radix.
.band — Donuts beat What Box?

Minds + Machines disclosed this morning that the four auctions in which it was involved cost it $5.97 million.
It’s not possible to work out how much .garden and .yoga cost the company; the $5.97 million figure is net of the money it won by losing .property and .deals, ICANN refunds and auctioneer commissions.
However, it seems reasonable to assume that the average price of a gTLD, even not particularly attractive ones (.garden? Really?), has sharply risen from the $1.33 million I calculated from the first 14 auctions.
In January, M+M raised roughly $33.6 million for auctions with a private share placement. The company is listed on London’s Alternative Investment Market.
The company said it now has an interest in 28 uncontested applications.
Also today, the Canadian Real Estate Association withdrew its Community application for .mls, but this is not believed to be related to the auctions. It has a non-Community application for the same string remaining.

2 Comments Tagged: applicant auction, auctions, donuts, Minds + Machines, new gTLDs, radix, uniregistry

101domain shifts blame to Google as premium buyers offered 50% discount

101domain has offered a 50% discount to customers that were sold premium new gTLD domains for a vastly reduced price, and has tried to shift some of the blame to the registry, Google.
The offer was made in a letter (pdf) to affected registrants — previously hit with delayed invoices for thousands of dollars for domains they bought for $12.99 — sent yesterday.
It indicates that the registrar is prepared to eat at least part of its pricing error on both first-year registrations and subsequent annual renewals.
101domain told customers:

• You now have until June 23, 2014 to make a decision whether to delete the name or pay for the premium name.
• If you want to keep the name(s), 101domain will offer you a 50% discount on the first year premium price and a 25% discount on premium annual renewals.
• If you give up your name(s), we will give you a credit on 101domain.com for any future purchases equal to 25% of the price of the premium name.

Previously, affected registrants had been told to pay up or have their domains deleted the following day.
As we reported last week, almost 50 domains in Google’s .みんな (“.everyone”) were sold for $12.99, despite some being earmarked by the registry as “premiums” with annual fees of up to $7,000.
In its letter to customers yesterday, 101domain characterized Google’s system for handling premiums as non-standard and difficult for registrars to work with.
Google’s list of premium names was circulated to registrars via an email, and the registry had no EPP commands for checking out whether a name was premium in real-time, the registrar says.
There was also no way for registrars to prevent the registration of premiums and no way to check with the registry for premium sales, it added.
It seems clear from the letter that the discounts now on offer mean that if registrants choose to keep their names they’ll be getting them at less than the registry fee — 101domain will eat the difference.

We contacted Google and requested them to work with us on the matter since we felt strongly that both sides were responsible to right the situation. Google offered no assistance other than extending the date to delete the names — telling us it was our problem.

Despite this seemingly generous response to domainer outrage, at the least one affected customer is not impressed.
In an email to DI last night the original registrant that first alerted us to the pricing problem described the latest 101domain offer as “lame”.

26 Comments Tagged: .みんな, 101domains, google, new gTLDs

Oops! TLD Registry over-reports first-day figures

TLD Registry’s first hours of Chinese IDN gTLD registrations were not as big as previously reported.
We reported earlier today that .在线 (“.online”) and .中文网 (“.chinesewebsite”) had made it to 54,011 names and 38,838 names respectively, just one hour after the 1300 UTC general availability.
However, a few hours later the company told us it had accidentally included thousands of registry-reserved names in those totals.
The actual numbers are 33,012 for .在线 and 17,537 for .中文网, as of 1900 UTC.
These are still extremely impressive numbers, and .在线 is still the biggest launch to date, surpassing the 31,645 with which .berlin ended its first day of GA a month ago.
That gTLD is likely to end the day in third or fourth place in the new gTLD league table, depending on how .photography (with 33,489 names this morning) performed today.
.guru’s crown remains.
Both sets of new numbers include sunrise, landrush and up to 10,000 names registered to the Chinese government under a special pre-release deal the registry negotiated, but they do not include reserved names.

20 Comments Tagged: .中文网, .在线, tld registry

Chinese “.online” beats .guru in one hour

The Chinese new gTLD .在线, which means “.online” has become the biggest new gTLD launch to date, taking tens of thousands of registrations in its first hour of general availability.
According to TLD Registry, which took .在线 and .中文网 (“.chinesewebsite”) to GA at 1300 UTC today, .在线 had 54,011 names and .中文网 had 38,838 names just one hour later.
UPDATE: These numbers were wrong.
That immediately puts .在线 at the top of the new gTLD leaderboard, a clear 1,500 names ahead of Donuts’ .guru (52,428 as of 0100 UTC), which has topped the chart for the last few months.
It took .guru, which launched January 29, 78 days to hit 50,000 names.
With its 38,838 names, .中文网 takes the number four position behind .guru and .berlin.
“As of the last minute before GA, the total number of domains in Dot Chinese Online (.在线) totalled 9,803, and the total number of domains in Dot Chinese Website (.中文网) totalled 8,623,” TLD Registry marketing director Simon Cousins told DI, citing numbers provided by back-end provider Afilias.
The company had allocated 20,452 names, split evenly between the two TLDs, to the Chinese government.
It also auctioned off several dozen names with Sedo at an event in Macau last month.
One of these, a real estate site at 房地产.在线, which means “realestate.online” has already gone live.

4 Comments Tagged: .中文网, .在线, tld registry

Microsoft dumps .live gTLD bid

Microsoft has abandoned its application for the .live new gTLD, leaving the erstwhile dot-brand in the hands of either Donuts or Google.
I found this quite surprising initially, as “Live” has been a core, cross-platform brand for the company, covering services such as Windows Live, Xbox Live and Office Live. The company also owns live.com.
But it recent years the brand has started to be phased out.
While Xbox Live is still a thing, Windows Live was closed down in April 2013 and Office Live seems to have suffered a similar fate in 2012, after the new gTLD application phase ended.
The withdrawal means that the .live contention set now only comprises Google’s Charleston Road Registry and a Donuts subsidiary. It’s likely headed to ICANN auction.
Unlike Microsoft, both remaining applicants propose open-registration spaces.

1 Comment Tagged: .live, google. donuts, Microsoft, new gTLDs, withdrawals

TLD Registry sells $584k of new gTLD domains, expects million-dollar sale next month

TLD Registry, the company behind two Chinese new gTLDs, says it has sold over $584,000 of premium domain names already and expects to make a seven-figure sale next month.
The Finnish-founded company is launching .中文网 and .在线, which mean “Chinese web site” and “online” respectively.
Marketing director Simon Cousins told DI this week that the company has sold $584,000 of domains so far and was “confident” of making a seven-figure sale — sounds like a multiple-domain batch — next month
The $584,000 figure includes the $182,000 worth of domains sold at a live/hybrid auction in Macau last month and 101 other domains sold privately for $402,000, Cousins claimed.
“We’re working on some blockbuster tranches right now, and are confident we’ll have a 7-fig sale to report in May,” he said in an email.
The company has been working with Sedo on premium auctions.
The landrush period ended yesterday. The gTLDs are due to go to general availability April 28.

9 Comments Tagged: .中文网, .在线, landrush, premiums, tld registry

Guy hit with $1,600 bill a month after registering “premium” name for $12.99

101domain has sent out almost 50 invoices, believed to total many thousands of dollars, to customers who had bought “premium” domain names for $12.99 well over a month ago.
One DI reader, who said he’d rather not be named, received a bill from the registrar today for $1587.01 for a .みんな domain name he hand-registered March 10 for the base fee of $12.99.
The email from 101domain stated that unless he pays the bill by 5pm PST tomorrow, his domain will be deleted:

It has come to our attention that the .みんな registry considers certain name(s) that you have registered with us as premium names and that there were some intermittent pricing errors on our website allowing you to purchase these name(s) at regular pricing. The cause of this error has been resolved and we sincerely apologize for the error.
In order to correct these pricing errors, the Registry has granted us the option to delete these names if we are unable to collect the premium pricing from our customers.
…
Due to a short deadline, payment must be received by Thursday, April 24, 2014, 5pm PST in order for deletion of the name not to occur. In the event that payment isn’t received by Thursday, April 24, 2014, 5pm PST the domain name(s) will be deleted, released back into the pool of available domain names, and any payments previously received for the domain names will be fully refunded to you.

The registrar offered a full refund of the $12.99 and a 20% discount coupon as compensation.
“I am not sure what’s the legal status of this,” the registrant told DI. “Also asking for this a more than a month later (purchased on 10th of March), besides being not cool, is just wrong.”
.みんな is one of Google’s new gTLDs. It’s Japanese for “everyone”.
101domain COO Anthony Beltran told DI that “fewer than 50” names were affected by the pricing error, all of them in .みんな.
“Literally every registry is doing things differently, but we have committed to offering them as our customers overwhelmingly demand them,” he said. “Most of them understand, as early adopters, there will be occasional issues, and our disclaimers and T&Cs speak to this.”
He offered the following explanation for the error:

In order to offer pre-paid orders, 101domain’s practice is to put up pricing as soon as it is confirmed and as soon as we receive lists of premium names, reserved names, and name collisions from a registry. This is generally well before EPP is available so there is no live domain:check. Our search queries these lists internally to offer accurate pricing well before most other registrars do so that our clients are well ahead of the curve with plenty of time to research and submit orders. Mistakes do rarely occur; some premium lists are fluid, complications have been introduced with SEDO and AFTERNIC getting exclusive listings of premium names (while we have access through their distribution channels like SEDO MLS), or names are snapped up in Sunrise, EAP, or Landrush. We will typically notify clients prior to names becoming active of any changes in pricing or availability and promptly refund in full if requested. With this TLD, this did not happen properly unfortunately.

Nobody’s claiming Google did anything wrong.
I’m not sure what American or Californian consumer protection law says about this kind of thing, but it is a quite startling situation.
Are there any other fields of commerce where you can be billed a month later because a retailer got confused about its wholesale prices?

36 Comments Tagged: .みんな, 101domain, google

Rook Media acquires DomainSponsor

Oversee.net surprised many in the domainer community yesterday when it announced the sale of its flagship parking service, DomainSponsor, to upstart rival Rook Media.
The deal, for an undisclosed sum, means Oversee, once the parent to brands such as Moniker and SnapNames, now barely has a presence in the domain name industry at all.
Switzerland-based Rook Media, describing itself as “Europe’s largest domain monetization platform”, was formed three years ago by former NameDrive and Sedo executives.
US-based DomainSponsor, on the other hand, has been around since 2002.
Rook CEO Ash Rahimi told Domain Name Wire yesterday that both platforms will operate independently for the foreseeable future.
Oversee said in a press release that it will “now focus on more aggressively developing its growth businesses” which comprise web sites in travel, consumer finance and retail.
The company sold off Moniker and SnapNames to KeyDrive in 2012. KeyDrive has since sold on SnapNames to Web.com.
Oversee still has the DomainFest conference listed as one of its brands on its web site. Other than that, there seems to be little left of its presence in the domain industry.

Comment Tagged: acquisition, domainsponsor, monetization, oversee.net, rook media

Registrant complains to ICANN over Uniregistry’s premium names

A would-be new gTLD registrant has appealed to ICANN over the domain name moviestar.photo, which she was unable to register because Uniregistry had reserved it as a premium name.
Danielle Watson filed a formal Request for Reconsideration (pdf) with ICANN last week, in the mistaken belief that ICANN had placed the domain she wanted on one of its block-lists.
She described her predicament thus:

a. Website Name Registration: I purchased one of the new gTLD domain names ending in .photo from 101domain.com on April 2, 2014. Moviestar.photo
b. I received an email on April 14, 2014 stating that ICANN kept this name from being registered in my name, and I would receive a refund in which I did.
c. I cannot understand why this name is being withheld, and being put into your reserve list.
d. I take very old Movie Stars photos and colorize them and put old fashioned frames around them and sell them at craft fairs locally. This name would have been a perfect fit for my use and sales. Please reconsider my request to be reconsidered and the name moviestar.photo reinstated/registered in my name with 101domain.com

Correspondence from 101domain provided by Watson (pdf) does not mention ICANN, so I’m not sure how she came to the conclusion that ICANN was to blame.
I fear she has targeted ICANN incorrectly.
The DI PRO name collisions database shows that the string “moviestar” has been blocked by ICANN’s policy on collisions in 15 new gTLDs, but Uniregistry’s .photo is not one of them.
Whois records show that moviestar.photo is in fact registered to North Sound Names. That’s the name of the Uniregistry affiliate currently in control of tens of thousands of Uniregistry premium names.
The RfR is not the venue for this kind of complaint and it’s likely to be dismissed for that reason. There’s not much ICANN can do about it.
Perhaps Watson would have better luck writing a begging letter to Uniregistry CEO Frank Schilling, who has indicated his willingness to allocate premium names to deserving users.

27 Comments Tagged: .photo, 101domain, ICANN, reconsideration, rfr, uniregistry

.nokia — a dot-brand without a brand?

Will .nokia be the next withdrawal from the new gTLD program?
It seems possible, if reports about the death of the Nokia brand are to be believed.
The news blog Nokia Power User reported yesterday that Nokia the company will be renamed Microsoft Mobile following the close of the $7.2 billion acquisition of Nokia by Microsoft this Friday.
The blog, which may live to regret its own choice of brand, quoted from a memo from the company to business partners, reading:

Please note that upon the close of the transaction between Microsoft and Nokia, the name of Nokia Corporation/Nokia Oyj will change to Microsoft Mobile Oy. Microsoft Mobile Oy is the legal entity name that should be used for VAT IDs and for the issuance of invoices.

However, in a blog post confirming the April 25 close date, Microsoft general counsel Brad Smith did not mention a rebranding.
The domain name nokia.com will live for up to a year, he said:

While the original deal did not address the management of online assets, our two companies have agreed that Microsoft will manage the nokia.com domain and social media sites for the benefit of both companies and our customers for up to a year.

What does that mean for the .nokia gTLD application?
According to the ICANN web site, Nokia is currently “in contracting” for the dot-brand.
It would not be unprecedented if it were to withdraw its application, however. Back in February 2013, the American insurance company AIG withdrew its bid for .chartis after a rebranding.

Comment Tagged: dot-brands, Microsoft, new gTLDs, nokia